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Paper short abstract:

This paper identifies four strategies of control employed by the post-conflict government in Côte d'Ivoire to tame the threat of former armed actors: organizational reform, co-optation, purging and spheres of influence. It argues that strategies have evolved over time in response changing contexts.

Paper long abstract:

How do civilian rulers tame the threat posed by ex-rebel leaders after transitions to peace? Existing scholarship emphasizes that because ex-rebel leaders retain access to material resources and command over wartime military networks, these actors are well positioned to either broker or thwart efforts at state consolidation. Little is known, however, about the different strategies employed by ruling civilian regimes in post-conflict states to exert control over the military leaders of former armed groups. Drawing on the case of post-conflict Cote d'Ivoire, we identify four strategies of control employed by civilian rulers to tame the threat of former armed actors and build a resilient regime. These strategies of control include: 1) organizational reforms to the security sector that disrupt ex-rebel leaders' military networks, 2) co-optation of ex-rebel leaders and their existing networks into the state apparatus, 3) purging of ex-rebel leaders to remove them from the political scene, and 4) tolerating ex-rebel authority within segmented spheres of influence. Each strategy entails distinct political and material costs for civilian rulers, and different strategies may be employed in response to changing domestic and international contexts. We argue that the ability of the government of Alassane Ouattara to flexibly employ these strategies of control against former leaders of the Forces Nouvelles (FN) rebel group helps to account for the surprising resilience of Ouattara's regime and the recent emergence of electoral autocracy in Côte d'Ivoire.